It has become common for pay television systems to be utilized for the transmission of television programming to subscribers who are willing to pay on a fixed periodic or on a pay per view basis for the programming. Many systems have been developed to provide such pay per view television. Such systems must scramble or somehow inhibit signal delivery to non-paying viewers. One such system, the technical basis of which forms a part of the present invention, is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,696,034, copending with this patent application, to the applicant here. Such a system allows for the secure encryption or scrambling of broadcast television signals and for the descrambling or decryption of those signals with decoders located at the home of each of the subscribers to the system. The subscribers are provided with periodically replaceable memory modules on which codes are provided which enable their descrambling decoders to properly decode the broadcast signals and upon which is also written information as to the programs actually viewed by the subscriber, so that the subscriber can be billed on a pay per use basis.
The system disclosed herein also makes use of a class of small home computers. These small computers are primarily intended for the playing of videogames and are marketed to the general public as programmable videogame systems. Several models of such systems are sold by Atari Corporation. Such videogame systems are, in reality, general purpose digital computers specifically adapted for the efficient display of information onto television screens. In order to make the systems economical so that they can be sold for game use at home, these systems have limited ROM and RAM memory size. Typically these systems are provided with a cartridge which can be plugged into the unit in order to play any particular game. The cartridge contains a read-only memory integrated circuit (ROM) onto which the program which actuates the playing of a certain game has been prerecorded.
The present invention is intended to combine the capabilities of systems such as these to provide for economical and efficient pay per use distribution of videotext materials and also videogames.